Fools For Love and Salt
by seilleanmor
Summary: 'He takes your hand and pulls and you are seventeen again.' Something, perhaps, a little different. COMPLETE


I know those of you not in the UK may not understand. Chips are fries.

* * *

For you, Shannon. You know why.

* * *

It is our night, so we buy chips

And grin guiltily over the greasy wrapper

At each other, crumpling yesterday's paper in our

Sticky, unharnessed hands.

We are fools for love and salt

And we see that it is good.

**- Chips, _Jenny Walker_**

* * *

He takes your hand and pulls and you are seventeen again, your father tugging you down the beach towards the prospect of food and your mother's laughter. The ocean's greedy mouth snaps at your ankles and you shriek, the heady delight spilling out of your chest and into his. You watch the way he draws it in, stores it behind his ribcage for safekeeping. To give back to you when you need it.

The sand bites hard at your calves, spraying from his heels. You don't mind being marked by the evidence of his exertion. It's not the first time.

You wonder if he's ever going to stop. It still hurts, sometimes. You still feel the phantom ache, the ghost of a bullet pushing its way past your sternum into your heart. Your breathing is heavy; your lungs thundering at your ribs and you wonder if the ladder of bone can constrain them or if they will break free, burst out.

You bite his palm with your fingernails where he has you trapped and he stops, turns to look at you. You relish the moment where he is all expectation and light, before he notices your chest heaving and the storm of guilt weighs heavy at the corners of his mouth.

You want his smile and the cobalt blue of his eyes. You tip forward into his arms and your open mouth traces a hot line over the thrumming pulse of his neck, across the mountain range of his jaw and up, up, ever up, cresting at his temple. You hum into the shell of his ear, your mouth suddenly awash with color that longs to spill free.

You pull away, step back, stretch your arms out and spin, your grin as wide as the arc of your hands. You feel like the stars are lit just for you and you want him to feel it too. You want him to know.

Suddenly vertiginous, you stumble into him again and he opens for you now, his arms a peaceful harbour to the frenetic rippling of your over-eager heart.

"Castle," you get out, words crumbling the tombstone of your teeth and settling in his shirt. You imagine them making a home in the breast pocket and you smile.

His fingers come up to trace the bow of your lower lip. He maps the topography of your happiness, lays it over his fingerprints as if it can stick.

You wonder if that's what he does when he traces the tracks of your tears, pays homage to your cheekbones as your breath stutters against his throat. If he paints your joy back on for you.

Your hand comes up to fist in his shirt. You know he doesn't mind, know he will iron his shirts himself as long as you are the one making the creases. "Where are we going?"

He presses a sentry row of kisses to the pale line of your scalp and you do your best to take fortification from it. You do wonder, sometimes, if other people feel things the way you do, or if the cacophonous roar of your mother's murder and your father's alcoholism and the betrayal of your captain and your training partner and the man who left you for Boston have altered you irrevocably.

He pulls back from you to better see your face. You see the planes and angles and lines of it reflected back at yourself and you want to gasp. Instead you dart forward to press your mouth to his, open and wanting. You push your tongue inside, slide over the ridge at the roof of his mouth, the heat of him wet and all encompassing.

When you pull back he laughs softly at you. "You know I can't answer your questions with your tongue in my mouth."

It still makes your blood sing, makes the walls of your veins hum with desire and adoration, the way he talks about your kisses like they are an inevitability. "Kisses are a better fate than wisdom."

He laughs and you surge again, crash your teeth against his and pull his lip into your mouth. You let him go and he skates his mouth down the slope of your nose. "Cummings?"

"Yes." You misconstrue him on purpose and break into a run again. You are not prepared to let your faltering heart win and flight is your only option now.

You feel him behind you and you soar, crest the wave of his omnipresent support. _You got this, Kate_, and yes, you do.

When you hit the pier the slats are gritty and the soles of your feet protest but you keep going. You know it's childish but you want to beat him to the snack hut, if only so you can pay. You can see the water through the gaps in the boards and you want to be underneath looking up.

You buy fries and battered fish and you laugh at yourself, eating such a symbolically British meal so soon after Independence Day. They come wrapped in newspaper and you hold them close to your chest as you wait for him, the heat permeating your skin, saccharine in your lungs.

He finds you, sinks next to you on the bench you chose and you pass his food over to him, the paper bearing all the words you need. Your fingers catch in the spaces between his, grasp for a moment and slide away.

You push a handful of fries into your mouth, the salt making your lips tingle. You smile at him, unable to help it, and when he kisses you he tastes like the ocean.


End file.
